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Friday, June 14, 2013

Sepia Saturday: Dressed to Impress

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to
share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday photo prompt depicts a lovely
young woman adorned with some elegant jewelry.
While many of the women in my family tree appreciated jewelry, their
tastes were decidedly more modest than that of the woman in the prompt.

Unfortunately,
I don’t have a picture of her wearing her jet beads that now are mine. The triple strand was originally a long
single strand which was popular among 1920s flappers who liked wearing a
necklace that reached at least to their waist.
Since Sudie would have been too old to be a flapper, maybe her jet beads
were actually mourning beads. The somber
color and simple design made them appropriate jewelry for women in mourning.

Mary Sudie Rucker

My sister is now the caretaker of Sudie’s ornamental hair
comb. It is black, probably celluloid.

Turn of the century “big hair” required a little
help. Enter the hair receiver.

Celluloid dresser set including the hair receiver

A Victorian dresser set would have included a tray, a
powder jar, and a hair receiver like the celluloid one I display on my
dresser. The hole in the lid allowed a
lady to fill the pot easily with hair removed from her brush and comb. When she gathered enough hair, she would
stuff it into a cloth bag called a “ratt” that could then be tucked under her
own hair to add volume and height.

I wish I could say this was Sudie’s dresser set and her
hair receiver. However, supposedly this celluloid
dresser set was my mother’s. She was a
teen in the 40s, so it’s unlikely the set is turn of the century. Plus it’s in terrible condition, speckled
with paint that probably resulted from being left out while a ceiling was being
painted. And there is nail polish, of
all things, on the lid of the hair receiver.
Had this dresser set been valuable, Momma would have taken better care
of it.

So why am I including it in a post about jewelry? Because of something weird we found in Sudie’s
attic.

I was quite young but I remember visiting Grandma Rucker’s
house one last time after she died.

In the attic we found a bag full of hair.

She must’ve been planning some big ratt!

Please visit my friends at Sepia Saturday. You can bet their posts are real gems.

I've seen those hair receivers in thrift stores...never knew what they were. So interesting. I have a friend with llamas and she saves their hair because "some day" she'll have the time to weave with it. She has a ROOM full of hair.

As a kid I wasn't concerned with what became of anything, so I don't really know, but I suspect it went in the trash. We're a sentimental bunch and make sure everything gets passed on to the next generation, but we surely drew the line at saving the hair.

Great ending to your post too Wendy, it's very fitting. Two new things I've learned, the Jet Beads, I've seen them, but didn't know their name, and the hair receiver, how very interesting. The bag of hair, I've seen that lovely and odd thing before, for when they made hair art, often to honor a loved one!

Yes, I read about hair art or mourning hair. My understanding though is it was usually hair cut from the dear departed and then woven into SOMETHING, a pin or pendant. Hair wadded up from a brush would have been too difficult to untangle for weaving. If you went to Rob from Amersfoort's Sepia entry and followed the link to his collection of daguerreotypes, you saw a woman wearing a hair mourning broach.

It's possible the hair was to be used for a craft project. That was pretty common with picture frames and jewelry made out of it. So you might be on target for the ornament theme, it's just that it was to be eventually made from hair.

I freak out when I find a hair, near food and elsewhere, imagine my reaction in I ever found a ratt!!! :D~ When clearing my mom's things, I came across some of those jet jewellery. Didn't think much of it then, and got of them... :(~ HUGZ

I don't want a hair near food either. We were at a very nice restaurant and had gotten about 3 bites into the dessert when my husband spied a hair. Our BALD waiter responded professionally and perfectly, but he did quip, "Well, it's certainly not mine!"

Hair receivers? Yeah, I knew about 'em, but I've never found a full one (or a rat, for that matter). I did find a postcard once that read: "Dear M: we got our rats all right." It took me a few minutes to figure out she wasn't taking about the rodent version!

Just now getting around to reading this. Hair receivers and jet beads are both new terms for me. And now that you have explained "ratt" - I suppose that when big hair was popular again in the 1960s and everyone "ratted" their hair the term came from this older usage of the word?

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About Me

My name is Wendy. About twenty years ago, I helped my mother research the Jolletts. Since retiring from teaching, I have expanded my research which I share here. When I’m not looking for my own family, I index for FamilySearch and the Greene County Historical Society.
Welcome to Jollett Etc. Please leave a comment to let me know you were here. If you have more information or believe we are related, EMAIL ME at wendymath at cox dot net